Thursday, April 23, 2009

Idiocracy

"As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point: Natural selection, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most."

In Idiocracy, extremely normal dude Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson) takes part in an ultra-top-secret military experiment to put him into hibernation for one year, but things go wrong and he wakes up 500 years into the future. In that period of time, evolution has turned back on itself and mankind has become stupider at a frightening rate. It's the year 2505, and average Joe now finds himself... the smartest man in the world!

In this future, the English language had deteriorated into "a hybrid of hillbilly, valley girl, inner city slang and various grunts", the President of America is a former pornstar and professional wrestler, and Fox News is the world's only remaining news source. As you can imagine, this is one of the crudest and stupidest movies imaginable. At least the movie poster warns you that it's from the creator of Beavis and Butthead.

Idiocracy is supposed to be a comedy, but at the same time the idea behind it is pretty damn scary. Think about it, the premise that natural selection no longer favors mankind's positive traits is actually true today-- the world's highest population growth rates are in the heart of suffering Africa, while countries like Germany and Japan have their population on the decline.

When there are entire families living on the streets and continuing to procreate like rabbits, when does the vicious cycle end? Could we really be in the beginnings of an evolutionary slide into dystopia?